


Doors Open Outward: Madoka Returns to Herself

by TaraSamadhi



Series: Love and Adventure in the Homura-verse [4]
Category: Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magika | Puella Magi Madoka Magica
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Romantic Comedy, Engagement, F/F, F/M, Friendship, Het, Identity Issues, Romantic Comedy, Self-Discovery, The Law of The Cycles, Transformation, True Love, Yuri
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-05
Updated: 2019-06-05
Packaged: 2020-04-08 09:59:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19104829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TaraSamadhi/pseuds/TaraSamadhi
Summary: Madoka stumbles into a pocket universe within the pocket universe Homura created in Rebellion.It's an entire simulacrum of Japan that is porous in that people can cross from the more familiar Homura-verse and this separate one, sometimes not to return.Homura does not know about this.Madoka, after having a pleasant time seeing her old friend Mami and her unexpected fiancee, has an explosive, ecstatic, revelatory encounter with her own identity.This story situates between "Homura and the Disappearing Ladder" and "Sayaka and Homura in the Homura-verse: Love and Wraiths".





	Doors Open Outward: Madoka Returns to Herself

About two months after Homura lost the ladder and gained Madoka, walking home from school, the two girls kissed goodbye and headed home. When Madoka looked back, Homura was looking back too, and they smiled at each other.

I guess it’s best that we stay calm, Madoka thought. I don’t think girls our age should go that fast. But I was the one who was doing it. I liked being naked with her. It felt wonderful. I love being lovers.

Homura-chan was just trying to live her life and make me happy. She’s spent way too much time trying to make me happy. I’m going to help her live her life as much as she’ll let me. But we’d better not take it too fast, even though I’m the one who wants that. We’re still girls. Magical girls, but girls. But I sure want to.

Sayaka and Kyouko were waiting a few blocks away at an outdoor table of a cafe, pretty and beaming in their second year uniforms. They were holding hands under the table. Madoka sat down across from them and looked around.

Both of them stared at her suspiciously.

“Madoka,” Sayaka said, “do you have something to tell us?”

Which something is she wondering about? Madoka thought. I guess I could choose one and leave the other one out. I’ll let them figure this world out on their own, at least for a while. When they stop being happy, I’ll have to tell them.

“Homura and I are lovers,” Madoka said. “Forbidden lovers, like you. Except we haven’t done anything immoral yet, unlike you two.”

Sayaka rolled her eyes and Kyouko shook her head. “C’mon,” Kyouko said, “we know that already. What else do you know?”

“Give me a little more time on that one,” Madoka said frankly, appreciating Kyouko’s fire-haired beauty. Kyouko was so happy now. “That’s something I have to work on myself.”

Kyouko and Sayaka backed off, but grudgingly. They stared at her frankly.

Sayaka glared at her. “Things have felt really strange now for a while, a lot of weird hallucination-type things, and you don’t seem to notice, so we think you know what it is. We don’t know why we know that and we don’t know what’s happening, but we have the feeling it has to do with you. And with Homura, who is avoiding us even more than she used to. We’re not kidding here, Madoka. It’s pretty scary and we want to know.”

“Really,” Madoka said. “I’ll tell you when I know.”

Madoka looked off into the distance. She could tell them, and Mami too, about Homura’s world here, but she had some things that needed to be done without the turbulence the knowledge would cause. Not least, she had to know how much of her was here and how much of her was outside, whether the Law of the Cycles was another her, and whether the world itself was still there or had been destroyed and succeeded by this one. She wasn’t worried that Homura would harm the Earth, but that enough time had passed on the outside of this world that it was all over and the magical girls were irrelevant.

Madoka said goodbye to her disgruntled friends and walked away toward home. It was her family there, for sure; there was nothing fake about them. The only strange thing is they had not changed in too long. Homura simply was not able to hold those details down, and Madoka thought her girlfriend was just tired. She had made this world and set it into motion, but she was tired.

Madoka was staring down at the ground, thinking hard, when she passed through the membrane.

Shocked, she looked up. It was another part of the city, downtown in a part where she had never been. In fact, she wasn’t sure it was the same town. Her body felt strange as well, and her were clothes tight, as though she had been swimming and they were drying on her wet. What in the world, she thought. Where am I.

Madoka stayed close to the buildings and away from the traffic blasting by. She passed beside a big show window in a department store and looked into it, interested in the stylish summer clothes there. What she saw was beyond her imagining. 

The person reflected there was her, alright, very clearly her, with the same face and making the same kind of expression she knew she was making at that moment. But her reflection was a woman, still a little childlike but maturing fast, maybe in her early twenties, the grace of early adulthood everywhere visible in her way of moving.

Madoka had seen enough weird things to accept what she was looking at. It was her, several years past high school, grown up. She had turned out well, still small but straight and with visible boobs. Her face was also more intelligent and mature. This was her future. Or it had been. Now it was her present and as far as she knew, her past.

“All right,” she thought, staying calm. After all, she had seen far stranger things.

Do you know this city? No. It is familiar, though. Some of the buildings look familiar, even though I’ve never been here. And all the people, where were they and where were they going? Where did all the cars come from? She saw an elevated train blast by a block away, and figured that this was a big city with all kinds of transportation for people. Motorcycles and motor bikes contended with cars and people on bikes went flying by. Where is this? she thought.

Tokyo, she decided. It was somewhere in Tokyo. But she had never been to Tokyo and been transported here. She was in her early twenties and a lot better looking than she ever thought she’d be. This had all happened because she had been walking home in Homura’s world and passed through some kind of membrane like plasma, where she felt a slight give in the air when she walked through but not enough to tell for sure it was there.

“Homura-chan,” she wondered. “Did you make this?” She cast her thoughts out toward her lover, but the mild and indefinite psychic caresses she shared with Homura did not make it through. She was here in Tokyo, a place she had never been, alone and uncertain of how or whether she could get out.

“Madoka!” someone yelled, excited, with a sound of shocked pleasure.

Madoka turned around to see her senpai Mami run toward her. Madoka reached out her arms and embraced her old friend, absent-mindedly noting that her boobs had gotten even bigger, as though that were remotely possible.

Mami pulled back a bit, beaming. “What are you doing here?”

Madoka shook her head. “I’m not sure. You’re living on the other side, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” Mami said, “but I keep coming over here. There’s a lot to tell you. You’re shining, do you know that? Literally?”

Madoka stared at Mami. “What do you mean?”

“I mean you’re shining, like an angel. I saw you immediately. Let’s go get some tea. I don’t live here on this side, it’s where my boyfriend lives.”

Just go with it, Madoka told herself. Just hang out with Mami and get a sense of what’s going on.”

“What do you think of living in two worlds?” Madoka asked Mami.

“I don’t know why I am,” Mami said, but I like it. “I can go back and forth. The other side is safe and nice, but this is where I belong.” She shook her head. “I don’t even know where I should have been in the first place. It’s like a world that makes no sense split into two parts I can make sense of, if you know what I mean.”

The two of them came to a tea shop, filled with people, in an old style with big windows letting in a lot of light. They ordered green tea with a intriguing fruit aroma and neat squares of cake in three differently colored layers with white chocolate butter cream icing. Still trying to come to grips, they drank and ate silently until they could talk in a meaningful way.

“Do you really not know what these worlds are about?” Madoka asked.

“It’s odd,” Mami said. “Sometimes when I’m falling asleep or waking up, I have these strong images of Homura dressed in dark clothes, looking sad. It makes no sense. But that sticks with me. It’s happening more frequently.”

Madoka nodded, looking at her.

“The thing is,” Mami said, “I keep meeting other people from the other side. In fact, my boyfriend is from over there.”

Madoka leaned forward. “Who would that be?”

“Kamijou Kyousuke, the violinist,” Mami said.

Madoka, for the first time in her life, actually spewed the tea she was drinking. “I’m sorry,” she said, “I’m really sorry. It’s just…”

“I know,” Mami said. “He goes to high school over there and dates a green-haired girl named Hitomi. When I’m on that side, it’s very awkward. But what’s extra weird is that when he’s on this side, he doesn’t know there’s another side. We go out together over here and he assumes it’s his only world, then he goes back and he barely knows me except as a senpai he barely knows in his school.

“I don’t tell him because I don’t think he’d believe me and he should figure it out on his own. He may have already figured it out and doesn’t want to tell me. And it’s the same guy; he’s not copied on the two sides. On this side, he’s already a hugely successful composer and international celebrity.

“The problem is that we’re getting married.”

Madoka almost fainted. “You’re getting married when he could leave anytime to cross over and be with Hitomi?”

Mami looked at her sadly. “It’s a big chance but I have to take it. We really love each other. We support each other in everything. Besides, I have an advantage.”

“What’s that?”

“I put out.”

Madoka thought about the timeline, now clearly accessible to her memory, in which Sayaka had gone mad because she was in love with Kyousuke and could not have him due to being a “zombie.” In the other part of Homura’s world Madoka was used to, Sayaka was in love with Kyouko and barely knew Hitomi, who seemed more interested in knowing her than the other way around. How strange things were. But how strange they had been since the day she saw Homura battling Walpurgisnacht in a dream and been harassed by Kyubey to help her, as Homura desperately tried to ward her off with her eyes.

What kind of hellish heaven did you try to create for us, Madoka asked Homura in her mind. Did you know this side existed, or that there would be an outside to fight in your loneliness? Did you know that slowly but surely, we would wake up, and what did you think would happen when we did?

You have always tried so hard for us, Madoka thought, especially for me, a small fearful girl who kept forgetting you.

How I love you, my Beloved. You are no demon. You are my goddess, my angel.

*

Mami invited Madoka to dinner, which Madoka wanted to attend if she hadn’t slipped back into the other side by then. Truth be told, she had never talked to Kyousuke. His existence had always refracted through Sayaka and the violin performances she shared with Madoka, who politely pretended to appreciate the music while pursuing a lifetime of ignoring classical music altogether. For that reason, Madoka was completely mystified as to why Mami would get together with him. But truth be told, a lot of guys had a weakness for sweet, maternal, giant-breasted women. 

But when Madoka saw him with Sayaka late in the game, he didn’t seem to care about that kind of thing at all. Of course, Sayaka’s boobs weren’t that big. She is cuter than most human beings, thought Madoka, but maximum boobage doesn’t apply even now. When did I start saying things like “maximum boobage” anyway? 

And as Sayaka admitted a couple of times, she was a “tag-along” with Kyousuke from the start, a childhood friend trying to get her friend’s attention. That one terrible timeline, redeemed by Kyouko proving the vastness of her love to Sayaka, wiped out so many futile routes marked, unwittingly, by him. He was just a slightly handsome, thin, not-too-friendly musical prodigy of a person. Well-intentioned, vaguely friendly, selfish, and emotionally incompetent. Hitomi didn’t have even remotely big boobs, so that could not be a factor. 

Madoka had always unkindly felt that Hitomi was basically a sponsor, an emotional funding source who could show him off to her parents’ rich friends. But based upon the “nightmare” sector of Homura’s labyrinth, with Hitomi endangered because of her loneliness and disenchantment at Kyousuke’s apparent indifference, she did love him, even though she lacked the boobs that Mami would later provide him. 

So I have definitely been unkind to Hitomi, Madoka thought. We were never really friends, just friends of Sayaka. How long have I held these grudges? Ah, since I’ve been here. Maybe long ago, before Homura-chan built this labyrinth they were all in, but certainly since we’ve been here. And Sayaka remembered who she really loved quite a while ago.

Madoka was thinking these things as she walked along some kind of park boulevard that led in the general direction of Mami’s house. How did this happen? Madoka thought. Was this Homura-chan, or is there someone else? No, she is the architect, no doubt about it. But I don’t think she knows this place is here. How could that be? But it seems to be true.

Then, impossibly, out of all the geographical areas in Tokyo, she saw it. Kyousuke, embracing Hitomi. Hitomi backing off smiling, suddenly kissing him on the lips, and walking away. Here, not in the other world, and kissing Mami’s fiancee was Hitomi. Madoka had stopped in her tracks and could not move. She would have been furious at the betrayal if she understood this new part of Homura’s world at all.

Kyousuke turned from the direction Hitomi had gone. Then he stopped, eyes locked on Madoka’s.

Oh, she thought. I have to get out of here and figure out a way to get out of dinner.

He hailed her. “Kaname-san? Are you Kaname-san?”

Madoka turned on her heel and walked away. Kyousuke was no fool; he had to contain the situation.

“Wait!” he shouted. “I swear to you this isn’t how it looks. Please stop and listen to me. Mami is all that matters to me.”

Madoka stopped and let him overtake her.

“Okay,” she said calmly. “You hurt a good friend of mine, before. You didn’t do it intentionally, so I waived that. But this….”

“Bad. I understand,” he said. “I’ve been going crazy, I’ll be honest with you, thinking there are two parts of this world. I’d try to forget it every time I slipped into or out of one. But finally it was clear that it was true. Hitomi was over there and Mami was over here. I was the lover of two women in literally two worlds. I know it’s insane, I don’t care if you think it is, it’s the truth. So I started staying on this side, building a life with Mami. The thing is, Hitomi started crossing over. She figured it out, I don’t know how. I found this out because she was on a train coming into Tokyo from Sapporo.”

“Sapporo?” There’s a Sapporo here? “What was she doing in Sapporo?”

Kyousuke scratched his head and looked away for a second, then looked back at her.

“She has a girlfriend.”

Madoka finally had no response. For a good twenty seconds, she stared into space, then gave an incredulous little laugh.

“Did I hear…”

“Yes, she started crossing over to this side and disappearing, and it turned out she had met a woman at a festival here. The woman feels ashamed about it because Hitomi is a lot younger, and Hitomi’s family has disinherited her, but she’s kind of relieved. On top of that, her mother just ran off with a woman and her father is beside him trying to figure out which world he’s in. Which makes perfect sense. How can he know? I can’t tell him; he would think I’m nuts even though I’m describing the same thing he’s going through. On the other side, he’s always gone, but on this side, he knows there’s somewhere he should be but doesn’t know where. I talked to him about it once. He doesn’t know what to do about the zaibatsu. Not a bad guy, really.

“Anyway, Hitomi just said goodbye to me. I wish she hadn’t kissed me like that, but she’s always been that way when no one is looking.”

Madoka shook her head. She had battled terrifying supernatural forces including a predatory space rabbit torturing girls because of a scientific theory she now knew to be wrong, survived her own stupidity over and over again, transfigured into a goddess and brought hope into a collapsing world, ruled over a realm of angelic magical girls who had made it to heaven, descended into the witch’s labyrinth of her beloved friend, been split into two parts by said friend, wandered around in an amnesia in which she circled around in the same foolishness she had always known, and awakened to love and a new understanding of the infinite star-born worlds.

So why was it so odd to know that Hitomi was lesbian?

After all, what would she have been without finding her only true love in a woman? Guys are alright, she thought, I might well have wandered off that way. Or knowing the idiot I was, I might have married a plushie. 

Now she remembered, Hitomi running off yelling “It’s forbidden love! Girls can’t love girls!” and afterward, “I was afraid you were leaving me behind.” The second part had gone right by her, then. Now it made sense.

Good luck with your bus driver, Madoka thought, directing her thoughts to Hitomi. I hope you’re happy on this side, whatever it is. I’m happy for you. As for me, also in love in a woman, I like you am wiser and more self-knowing, even though I’m pretty sure I’m not smarter.

*

Madoka learned at dinner that she had barely caught Kyousuke and Mami before they moved. They were going to start a music academy for children in Kyoto, in just a few days. Mami was very happy to have met Madoka on this side and had a chance to speak to her, because at this point Mami did not even know if she existed on the other side anymore.

Madoka felt happy, watching them. She could sense their carnality, a phenomenon she was only beginning to know herself. It was simple. Mami liked skinny guys she could direct while they thought they were leading. Kyousuke liked voluptuous women who were light on their feet. The rest followed. Madoka had heard about how men and women made love, although she did not know quite how to visualize it. But now, she could see how it might be sweet and wild and strong.

Most of all, though, beyond sex, they took each other seriously. Especially their mistakes. They not only forgave each others’ mistakes; they understood the depth and meaning of each others’ mistakes and what it showed about each and both of them. Beyond the mistakes were the things they did wonderfully, pure joy like music. Good for them, Madoka thought. Bless them. May they be blessed.

Madoka watched night fall outside the dining room window, suddenly sensing that it was time to go and try to get back to her beloved and her friends and her family. She hugged Mami, shook hands with Kyousuke and wished him well, and headed out.

The streets were empty, a strange development but one that made sense when one considered the cracks there had to be in a world seemingly made of pieces shoved together.

Then, it happened, a storm of beauty and love and power, the memory of which made her break down weeping for years after.

At first, it seemed like the sky was filled with sheet lightning in her peripheral vision but nowhere else. But that wasn’t it. The sky was layered, strobed by vast pulses of light, and somehow as she stared at it she saw that the layers were membranes like the one that separated this world from the other, plasma solid like flesh but porous like a dream. And beyond the membranes, what looked like a red comet heading straight toward her, with a tail of white silk trailing it.

It was almost to her by the time she realized it was herself as the Law of the Cycles, smiling radiantly and lovingly and calmly.

Madoka reached out her hand, tears suddenly spilling out of her eyes and down her cheeks. How she had missed herself, how she had missed the one she was. How she had missed heaven, the girls, the radiance of limitless hope and meaningless time. As she thought this, her other self broke through the last membrane and took her her hand.

Before falling weeping to her knees, Madoka knew it. She was not exiled, she was the same as one or two, the Law of the Cycles always, in whatever simulacrum she found herself. Because as she and her other self clasped hands, her spirit exploded like the birth of a billion suns. There was nothing but love, nothing but love inside and outside her, nothing but grace and glory and peace. Everywhere these things were, she was and always had been, even as a silly little girl. Nothing had changed, only what her inner and outer eyes chose to register. 

As explosion after explosion of pure joy and recognition annihilated her, fusing her with the one she had never stopped being, she knew it finally and forever. Everything was love if she opened her heart to it, every bit of it, the most horrible things merely doors waiting to open, like witches begging for release.

The membranes of passage between worlds reach out for the reaching.

All doors of the human heart open outward.


End file.
